What is a part of speech?

A part of speech is a group of words that are used in a certain way. All words in the English language are divided into eight different categories and each category has a different role or function in the sentence. Remember that in the English language many words are used in more than one way. This means that a word can function as several different parts of speech. Each part of speech explains not what the word is, but how the word is used. In fact, the same word can be a noun in one sentence and a verb or adjective in the next. To know for sure what part of speech a word is, we have to look not only at the word itself but also at its meaning, position, and use in a sentence.